In an unusual step, the Iraq Museum of Baghdad is granting permission for 40 artifacts––some of them only recently repatriated after the museum’s 2003 looting––to leave the country and be displayed at the Venice Biennale.

A Benedictine monk works to save Christian and Islamic manuscripts under threat from the Islamic State.

Jamal al-Harith, who spent two years in Guantánamo between 2002 and 2004, became a suicide bomber for the Islamic State.

In Bahrain, a constitution amendment making its way through the legislature would enable military courts to try civilians.

Three Indian soldiers and a civilian were killed in a gun battle with militants in Kashmir.

The global arms trade is at its highest volume since the end of the cold war.

The humanitarian situation worsens in Myanmar despite hopes for Aung San Suu Kyi.

Malaysian police say that Kim Jong-nam, estranged half-brother of the North Korean leader, was killed by a nerve agent.

The Muslim member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency has asked the International Court of Justice to reopen a 2007 case in which the court found there was not enough evidence to find Serbia responsible for genocide.

Everyone seems to have a peace plan for Ukraine. A reported plan presented to Trump included a provision that Ukraine conduct a referendum on whether Crimea would be leased to Russia for 50 or 100 years.

Escalated fighting in eastern Ukraine reaches the outskirts of Mariupol, which had achieved a stretch of relative confidence and calm.

Russia violated a 1987 arms control treaty by deploying a new ground-launched cruise missile.

Deutsche Bank, which has loaned hundreds of millions to Donald Trump, conducted an internal review to see if those loans had Russian involvement. The review unearthed nothing, but the bank remains under pressure over its relationship with Trump, et. al.

Trump’s national security advisor Michael Flynn resignedafter ongoing fallout from the revelation that he discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador before the inauguration. He also lied to the FBI about it. It’s a real who-knew-what-when situation. This comes amid related news that Trump campaign staff and associates had repeated contact with Russian intelligence officials during the election.

Retired Navy Admiral Robert Harward was offered Flynn’s job and turned it down.

Several White House staffers were dismissed after failing background checks.

Israel passed legislation that retroactively legalized 4000 settlement homes constructed on Palestinian land. 17 Palestinian municipalities in the occupied West Bank are petitioning the Israeli Supreme Court to strike down the law.

A new report on Syria’s infamous Saydnaya Prison describes it as a “human slaughterhouse” where extrajudicial proceedings deem detainees guilty based on false confessions extracted through torture and where many thousands of people have been hung in mass executions.

Both the Russia-backed pro-government forces and the Turkey-aligned Syrian rebels, are advancing on the northern Islamic State enclave of Al-Bab. A Russian airstrike on the city killed 3 Turkish soldiers.

A survey of the foreign policy establishment (which is overwhelmingly male) finds that they are uninformed on research about the role of gender in conflict and national security and don’t usually think of it as a significant factor.

As South Sudan is consumed by violence, questions are raised about its newly achieved independence.

The Democratic Republic of Congo will extradite 186 suspected Burundian rebels, despite rights groups’ concerns about what they will face in Burundi.

After 27 years of rule and a great deal of resistance to the transition of power, Yahya Jammeh has left Gambia and Gambians are celebrating their new president, Adama Barrow. Before his exile, Jammeh managed to steal millions from his country in his final weeks in power.

In the final hours of his administration, President Obama released $221 million to the Palestinian Authority in defiance of Republican members of Congress who had placed a (non-binding) hold on the funds.

Israel approved a huge new settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.

Representative Tulsi Gabbard revealed in a CNN interview that she had indeed met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on a recent trip to Syria and in the same interview pushed regime talking points about Syrian rebels.

The attorney general of Afghanistan ordered the arrest of nine of Vice President Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum’s bodyguards after an elder from Dostum’s Uzbek tribe accused him of abducting, beating him, and ordering his bodyguards to torture and rape him.

The Economist’s Intelligence Unit, which releases an annual report on the state of democracy around the globe, said the world continues to be in a democratic recessionand downgraded the US from a full to a flawed democracy.

Trump’s insecure Android phone is a serious national security threat. We should already assume the device has been compromised by hostile foreign intelligence services.

Senegalese troops entered Gambia yesterday in a bid to force President Yahyah Jammeh to relinquish his rule to the democratically-elected Adama Barrow. Jammeh has been given until midday today (Friday) to cede power.

The Ivory Coast’s military mutiny is cause for worry in an otherwise bright post-conflict narrative.

In Somalia, Al-Shabaab is making extensive use of child soldiers. The verifying the recruitment of more than 6,000 children between 2010 and 2016 and estimating that half of the group’s forces were child recruits.

Analysis: the consequences of Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders.

Among his hundreds of acts of clemency as he left office, President Obama commuted the bulk of Chelsea Manning’s 35-year sentence. She will be released in May. For those who might criticize the choice, here’s an essayfrom Lawfare in September arguing the case for her commutation. Also important to note that her pre-trial imprisonment was investigated by the UN and deemed “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” and she has since faced inter-related struggles with gender dysphoria, suicide, and solitary confinement.

Obama also commuted the remaining 35 years of Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar López Rivera’s 55 year sentence for “seditious conspiracy.”